Chapter 2 - The Door Beneath the Chapel
The sound of breaking glass stopped the orchestra. Carlo stared at Mia as though she'd spoken a dead man's name. Antonio pocketed the key, told the photographer to leave, and ordered every guest out of the ballroom. No one argued. He had built his empire on the certainty that his commands were obeyed.
Isabella protested. “You're humiliating me.”
“Then go upstairs,” he said. “You can be humiliated in private.”
I escorted Mia to the kitchen, where I made cocoa she didn't drink. She asked whether the photograph meant her mother had known Isabella. I couldn't answer. What I could do was stay beside her until her breathing slowed.
An hour later Antonio found me in the pantry. “Did she tell you where she found the sewing box?”
“In the old linen closet. Behind the cedar panels.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “That closet was sealed after the fire.”
“Then someone opened it.”
He looked at me sharply. “You understand what you're suggesting?”
“I understand that your daughter is frightened.”
That seemed to reach him. He asked me to accompany him to the estate chapel, a stone building on the edge of the grounds. Carlo was waiting there with a flashlight and a pistol tucked into his coat. The chapel's basement had seventeen numbered storage rooms, relics of the property's days as a boarding school.
Room seventeen had no handle. A brass plate covered the lock. Antonio slid in Mia's key. It turned smoothly.
Inside stood a metal filing cabinet, a child's blue bicycle, and a wooden trunk bearing the initials E.B.—Elena Bellucci, Mia's mother. Antonio opened the trunk. Beneath folded quilts lay an envelope addressed to him in Elena's handwriting.
My dearest Antonio, it began. If you're reading this, someone has made sure I cannot tell you myself.
He stopped reading. Carlo reached for the letter, but Antonio pulled it away.
“Who knew about this room?” Antonio asked.
May you like
Carlo answered too quickly. “Only family.”
Then I noticed a second set of muddy footprints on the dusty floor. Someone had been there before us. And from the dark stairwell above came the soft click of a door closing.
